Project Server 2010 and Windows 7

A while back I heard that there would be an improved developer story for the next version of SharePoint. For those that have never tried developing for the platform, you typically have to have a virtual machine and dev against that.

Given the change to 64bit only and the large resource overhead running SharePoint and Project Server in a VM is a bit more of a challenge. With the new 2010 release, MS have provided support for SP2010 to be installed on Windows 7 64bit so that a developer can run it locally and provided an MSDN article to get it going, however they haven’t provided one for Project Server as the Win 7 development scenario is not officially supported, but it does appear to work. Now I accept no responsibility if you use this method, and you do so at your own risk.

Create a Windows 7 image using “Boot to VHD”

First up, you need a Windows 7 installation. I don’t tend to use my main Win 7 installation for development, so I created a fresh one using the excellent boot to VHD capability of Windows 7. In short there are two sets of commands you need to get boot to VHD working:

Now, if you follow the above, and don’t run into any issues, you will have a working SharePoint 2010 dev install.

Installing Project Server 2010

The process to install Project Server 2010 is very similar to the above, but I will spell it out as it doesn’t appear to have its own MSDN entry.

1. Extract the contents of the Project Server executable to a temporary location by entering the following:

ProjectServer.exe /extract:c:\temporarylocation

where ProjectServer.exe is the name of your Project Server 2010 installation executable and c:\temporarylocation is where you wish to extract it to.

2. Next up we need to change the Project Server installation script to let it think that it can install on a client, to do this navigate to the file Config.xml located in c:\temporarylocation\Files\Setup, and add the line <Setting Id=”AllowWindowsClientInstall” Value=”True” /> to the <Configuration> section, so the final version of the file looks like this:

3. Now Project Server 2010 can be installed in the normal manner and is ready for development on your Windows 7 box. Again, there is a reason that MS decided this scenario wasn’t going to be supported, so if you run into issues using Project Server 2010 on Windows 7, leave a comment below so we can all benefit.

7 thoughts on “Project Server 2010 and Windows 7”

I manage to install the new RC of sharepoint but
when i try to install project server i am getting missing roles or features,
any idea? could this be due to the prerequisites regarding the iis configuration?
though I did get a the sharepoint sites working.

I have installed SharePoint 2010 on Windows 7 without any issue. When I was Installing Project Server 2010 on Windows 7 after modified the Files\Setup\config.xml as you explained above, it gave me following error box;

“The Setup configuration file FILES\SETUP\config.xml is not valid. Run Setup again without using a Setup configuaration file, or fix the configuration file.”.

Hi,
The short answer is since RTM, Project Server 2010 on Windows 7 is not supported and is blocked. There are workarounds that you may find on the web, but you should be aware that whilst using these may result in PS2010 installing, the behaviours seen and experienced may be different .

If you really need to run PS2010 on W7, your best bet is to get VirtualBox or another similar desktop virtualisation technology and use that to host a SP/PS vm.